"Landscape"

GIAN MARCO MONTESANO

Gian Marco Montesano, born in Turin in 1949, is considered by the public and critics to be one of the most refined and cultured contemporary artists worldwide. He studied in Turin at the Salesian Seminary in Valdocco. He did not follow an ecclesiastical vocation because his artistic and intellectual inclination was stronger, leading him in the 1970s first to Bologna and then to Paris, where he got to know Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, among others. Montesano's initiation into painting took place long before, while he was still a seminarian at Valdocco. Hence the choice of the title, Andarera, a sort of A rebours, a journey backwards to the places of memory and childhood. In the early 1970s, his first works were, in fact, reproductions of Madonnas and those sacred images, souvenirs distributed to the faithful in sanctuaries and during spiritual exercises. Montesano enlarges and revisits them in a post-modern key, drawing on the fine tradition of popular painting but also covering them with conceptual and theoretical meanings. There are several paintings dedicated to Turin and to the memory of his father who worked as an 'eccentric' in the world of the avant-garde: emblematic is the painting Torino anno zero of 1989, an image of the artist as a child walking with his father. Since the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Montesano has been included in the sphere of so-called Medialism, the pictorial, neo-pop and cartoonist revival current of which he was an absolute precursor. From this context, however, he differs greatly, because by investigating history and the past Montesano re-reads the dramatic and crucial years of the formation of Europe during the 20th century up to the moment of its crisis. Alongside these, there are also sweet images of children, seductive female portraits, vast landscapes with a romantic flavour, and urban views of the cinema genre, which Montesano paints with his unmistakable neo-realist, indeed post-realist, style. Besides being an accomplished painter, Montesano is a passionate theatre director. His Compagnia Florian, based in Pescara, has presented shows in Paris, Hungary and all over Italy. His first participation in the Biennale was in 1993, a year in which he was already considered one of Europe's leading figurative painters. In 2002, Montesano took part in a collective exhibition at the Boxart art gallery in Verona with works related to the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins, achieving considerable success. Between 2006 and 2007, the Cultural Department of the Municipality of Pietrasanta promoted the exhibition Berlino 1936, curated by Valerio Dehò, in the rooms of the Cloister of Sant'Agostino in Pietrasanta (Lucca). In 2009, he was invited, together with other artists, to represent Italy at the Venice Biennale, where a personal room was dedicated to him. Montesano is known to the public for rereading the dramatic and crucial years of the formation of Europe during the 20th century up to the moment of its crisis. In recent years, while remaining faithful to his most famous poetics, he has dedicated himself to the representation of flowers, a seemingly 'common' subject but one that the artist actually interprets with a unique language. In 2018, he created the famous Drappellone del Palio di Siena. His works can be found in prestigious museum and private collections. He lives and works in Bologna.